# Bulk adding auto approve email domains
**URL:** https://meta.discourse.org/t/bulk-adding-auto-approve-email-domains/233932
**Category:** Support
**Created:** [July 14, 2022, 12:48pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/bulk-adding-auto-approve-email-domains/233932 "2022-07-14T12:48:03Z")
**Posts on this page:** 12
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@robbie.morrison](https://meta.discourse.org/u/robbie.morrison)
#### Post date: [July 14, 2022, 12:48pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/bulk-adding-auto-approve-email-domains/233932/1 "2022-07-14T12:48:03Z")
Continuing the discussion from [Formalized assignment and possible logging of pending applications](https://meta.discourse.org/t/formalized-assignment-and-possible-logging-of-pending-applications/232724)
Is the value for `auto approve email domains` a space‑separated string? Or comma‑separated or newline‑separated? TIA, R
---
### Author:  [@JammyDodger](https://meta.discourse.org/u/JammyDodger)
#### Post date: [July 25, 2022, 7:30pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/bulk-adding-auto-approve-email-domains/233932/2 "2022-07-25T19:30:13Z")
In the UI, you add them one by one using the ➕ button (and then confirming with the green tick)
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### Author:  [@robbie.morrison](https://meta.discourse.org/u/robbie.morrison)
#### Post date: [July 25, 2022, 7:55pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/bulk-adding-auto-approve-email-domains/233932/3 "2022-07-25T19:55:16Z")
Many thanks @JammyDodger. We were thinking of being a **bit more automated**. We planned to export our current list of emails, then extract those that matched the [hipo list](https://github.com/Hipo/university-domains-list) of university domains, and then import that new list into discourse under the `auto approve email domains` key. Using [python](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Python_%28programming_language%29) and [pandas](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pandas_%28software%29) for the numercal processing. I guess that route is not supported? Or do we, or can we, have programmatic access? (PS: with reference to your screenshot, [gmail.com](http://gmail.com) is that last domain name we would dream of automatically approving.)
Oh, and can we use **wildcards** like: `*.tu‑berlin.de` to account for departmental information being included, say `maths.tu‑berlin.de`.
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### Author:  [@JammyDodger](https://meta.discourse.org/u/JammyDodger)
#### Post date: [July 25, 2022, 8:17pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/bulk-adding-auto-approve-email-domains/233932/4 "2022-07-25T20:17:02Z")
I had a feeling I was being far too simplistic. 🙂 I think this would benefit from splitting into a new #Support topic to get some more knowledgeable eyes on it. 👍
> [@robbie.morrison](#):
>
> (PS: with reference to your screenshot, [gmail.com](http://gmail.com) is that last domain name we would dream of automatically approving.)
This I can appreciate. 🙂 Don’t worry though, it was a screenshot of a mockup on my test site, not the settings here on Meta. 🙂
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### Author:  [@Jonathan5](https://meta.discourse.org/u/Jonathan5)
#### Post date: [July 25, 2022, 8:40pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/bulk-adding-auto-approve-email-domains/233932/5 "2022-07-25T20:40:56Z")
> [@robbie.morrison](#):
>
> Oh, and can we use **wildcards** like: `*.tu‑berlin.de` to account for departmental information being included, say `maths.tu‑berlin.de`.
Sadly, I believe this is not possible. I made a feature request mentioning this:
> [@Allow automatic group membership based on subdomain](https://meta.discourse.org/t/allow-automatic-group-membership-based-on-subdomain/213615/1):
>
> An alternative (if you were worried about users who currently _intend_ to exclude subdomains from automatic membership) would be to allow wildcards, e.g. to type `*.domain.com` for automatic group membership.
My main proposal was probably _not_ what you’d want (it would mean if you added [tu-berlin.de](http://tu-berlin.de) it would include [maths.tu-berlin.de](http://maths.tu-berlin.de) and every other department).
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### Author:  [@robbie.morrison](https://meta.discourse.org/u/robbie.morrison)
#### Post date: [July 25, 2022, 9:07pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/bulk-adding-auto-approve-email-domains/233932/6 "2022-07-25T21:07:53Z")
> [@Jonathan5](#):
>
> My main proposal was probably _not_ what you’d want (it would mean if you added [tu-berlin.de](http://tu-berlin.de) it would include [maths.tu-berlin.de](http://maths.tu-berlin.de) and every other department).
That is exactly the behavior I was seeking.
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### Author:  [@leonardo](https://meta.discourse.org/u/leonardo)
#### Post date: [July 25, 2022, 9:48pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/bulk-adding-auto-approve-email-domains/233932/7 "2022-07-25T21:48:32Z")
> [@robbie.morrison](#):
>
> We planned to export our current list of emails, then extract those that matched the [hipo list](https://github.com/Hipo/university-domains-list) of university domains, and then import that new list into discourse under the `auto approve email domains` key. Using [python](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Python_%28programming_language%29) and [pandas](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pandas_%28software%29) for the numercal processing. I guess that route is not supported? Or do we, or can we, have programmatic access?
If you have access to the Rails console, then you can set `allowed email domains` to an a pipe-delimited string with arbitrarily many hostnames, so that sounds workable.
Not sure why you would need numerical processing though; this can be done with standard UNIX tooling.
This gives you the list of domains from the Hipo list:
```bash
curl -L 'https://github.com/Hipo/university-domains-list/blob/master/world_universities_and_domains.json?raw=true' |
jq '.[].domains' |
jq -r add |
sort -u
```
If you saved that as `domains.txt`, and assuming you have a file with email addresses named `emails.txt`, you could get the subset of domains to allowlist with this:
```bash
grep -if domains.txt emails.txt |
cut -d @ -f 2 |
sort -u
```
That is, even if the domain list contains just `tusculum.edu`, an email like `some.student@mail.tusculum.edu` would yield `mail.tusculum.edu` which is the hostname you actually want to allowlist, as opposed to the apex.
Then it’s just a matter of setting a pipe delimited string containing these domains. Does that work for you?
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### Author:  [@robbie.morrison](https://meta.discourse.org/u/robbie.morrison)
#### Post date: [July 25, 2022, 10:02pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/bulk-adding-auto-approve-email-domains/233932/8 "2022-07-25T22:02:30Z")
Thanks @leonardo. I will need to ask my discourse hosting provider if I can access the Ruby on Rails console (I tend to suspect not?). But will submit a question tomorrow.
I am comfortable with the bash shell utilities you mention (I started on SCO UnixWare circa 1997 before migrating to Linux). One reason for adopting python is that future admins of our forum are more likely to be knowledgeable about python.
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### Author:  [@leonardo](https://meta.discourse.org/u/leonardo)
#### Post date: [July 25, 2022, 10:13pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/bulk-adding-auto-approve-email-domains/233932/9 "2022-07-25T22:13:05Z")
Perfect; Python should make it equally easy.
> [@robbie.morrison](#):
>
> will need to ask my discourse hosting provider if I can access the Ruby on Rails console
Failing that, you can use the API (with an admin account) to `PUT /admin/site_settings/allowed_email_domains` with a form encoded payload like this:
`allowed_email_domains=zuyd.nl%7Czzgc.edu.cn%7Czzut.edu.cn`
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### Author:  [@RGJ](https://meta.discourse.org/u/RGJ)
#### Post date: [July 25, 2022, 10:57pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/bulk-adding-auto-approve-email-domains/233932/10 "2022-07-25T22:57:24Z")
> [@robbie.morrison](#):
>
> if I can access the Ruby on Rails console (I tend to suspect not?). But will submit a question tomorrow.
No, you cannot, but you can always use the API (as Leonardo suggested) or simply open a ticket with the command you want us to run for you. We’ll even send you back the output 😉
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### Author:  [@robbie.morrison](https://meta.discourse.org/u/robbie.morrison)
#### Post date: [July 26, 2022, 6:13am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/bulk-adding-auto-approve-email-domains/233932/11 "2022-07-26T06:13:24Z")
@RGJ many thanks. One other thought, probably completely without merit. But being able to upload an overarching database, such as the [hipo list](https://github.com/Hipo/university-domains-list), to a discourse instance and have discourse do this kind of screening and processing would, from a users perspective, be ideal. 🦥
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### Author:  [@system](https://meta.discourse.org/u/system)
#### Post date: [November 9, 2022, 12:29pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/bulk-adding-auto-approve-email-domains/233932/12 "2022-11-09T12:29:30Z")
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